Ghost

Ghost represents a new normal: a resurrection of the Humanist sans that works backwards from the genre’s origin in monumental Roman lettering towards a new ordinary. With Ghost, normalcy is not a reduction, nor a simple description, but rather a set of complex, deeply nuanced design decisions.

If Humanist sans-serifs are arguably best understood by the ways in which they uniquely play to and against the genre’s technical parameters, they’ve become something of a “floating signifier” in our modern world—a style wherein everybody sees different things. This has resulted in a genre exhausted of meaning. While most Humanist sans lack both a calligraphic basis and the cleanliness of rational construction, Ghost takes a different approach by using a framework pioneered by Edward Johnston with his eponymous sans. Ghost does this by harmonizing key elements of the Humanist sans genre’s most compelling exemplars—including Johnston Sans, Optima, and Antique Olive—within the contemporary context of our digital world. Ghost conceives of these motifs as mechanically constructed expressions of calligraphic form, connecting the typeface to the human hand not by imitation, but by representation.

Ghost was designed for adaptability—pragmatic and striking in equal measure—but its design is further contextualized by the argument that it represents. It’s a tension of tenses: past, present, and future. In form, in spirit, and in name, this is a playful yet reverent proposition for a new standard within a hallowed style of type design, and a winking acknowledgement that type design is a living, breathing art form.